The Study Of Vocabulary Depth Acquisition Of Advanced Chinese EFL Learners

The importance of depth of vocabulary knowledge is, in recent decades, widelyaccepted and emphasized by researchers and linguists. In regard to acquiring depth ofvocabulary knowledge, an important research area is to look at different componentsof depth of vocabulary knowledge. But most of the researches in the realm of depth ofvocabulary knowledge have focused only on one or two components. Thus, it isnecessary to adopt a more holistic approach to examine depth of vocabularyknowledge. The main aim of this thesis is to investigate the use of depth ofvocabulary knowledge by analyzing the components of morphological structures,collocation, colligation, and semantic prosody. It tries to explore learners’ use of depthof vocabulary knowledge by analyzing the high frequency verb MAKE in ChineseLearners English Corpus (CLEC) and native corpus Freiburg-LOB Corpus of BritishEnglish (FLOB).Relevant data is processed in two steps, namely, the collection and classificationof the data; the contrast, analysis, and explanation of the differences and similaritiesof the data. The results reveal that differences and similarities exist between seniorChinese EFL learners and native speakers in acquiring depth of vocabularyknowledge. Four major findings have been derived from this research:1) There exist striking significant differences in the use of morphologicalstructure between advanced Chinese EFL learners and native speakers. Chinese EFLlearners obviously overuse all forms of MAKE, especially the form of make. However,the present-continuous tense is seldom used by both native speakers and EFL learners.2) Senior Chinese EFL learners are more familiar with the use of "MAKE+O"and "MAKE+O+bare-inf" than the use of "MAKE+O+C" and "MAKE+verbalphrases". 3) Chinese EFL learners show lack of variations on the use of collocates incontrast with native speakers, and they mainly focus on some collocates, like effort,money, contribution.4) Advanced Chinese EFL learners and native speakers both incline to the use ofneutral prosody of MAKE. Chinese EFL learners prefer the positive prosody tonegative prosody of MAKE.The findings of this study suggest that learners, even at an advanced level, cannot acquire the same vocabulary knowledge as native speakers. The different use ofverb MAKE may caused by linguistic factors like L1transfer, intralingual, andincomplete understanding of meanings of words; non-linguistic factors liketeaching-induced, cultural and religious factors. In order to acquire the native-likevocabulary knowledge, vocabulary teaching should take into consideration thedifferent components of depth of vocabulary knowledge. First, it is essential toacquire the ability to use the appropriate form of a word in a given context. Second,except grammatical collocation, lexical collocation should be emphasized in learningEnglish. Last, students should be conscious of the phenomenon of semantic prosody,for semantic prosody is not only more vulnerable to hide the intention of the textproducer, it also helps provide insight into the distinction of synonyms.